A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Russian music site silenced
AllofMP3.com, the Russian-based site that sold cut-price digital music, much to the chagrin of the music industry in the West, has been shut down. It is understood that the US put pressure on the Kremlin to shutter the site, which sold popular albums for less than €2 and claimed it was complying with Russian copyright law.
But just as the music industry was celebrating its success came the news that the founders of the site had launched a similar service called MP3Sparks.com. That site could not be accessed yesterday.
Online auctions a handy service
A new Irish site, BidtoBargain.ie, is providing a reverse auction forum for home improvement and building services such as painting, plumbing, landscaping and interior design.
Visitors post a request for a specific job and suppliers can reply with a quote, which is posted on the auction. Other suppliers can then provide a lower quote.
Similar services in the US, Australia and Germany have proven extremely popular. Managing director Ulf Oberdieck says all suppliers will need to provide "detailed business information, references, qualifications and company registration numbers before quoting for any job".
Firms celebrate anniversaries
Irish localisation company VistaTec celebrated 10 years in business this week. Founded with a staff of five, it now employs 105 and provides services to clients globally, including some of the world's leading technology companies, from its Dublin base.
Meanwhile Cork-based quality and risk management specialist Softtrace, which sells its software to the dairy, food and beverage and pharmaceutical industries, has marked five years in business.
The company was formed in 2002 by three former employees of Qualtrace Solutions - a software company that went into liquidation.
Project gears up for car talk
IBM researchers in Israel have embarked on a futuristic project called Collaborative Driving. They are conducting research into active safety and driver-assistance technologies in vehicles that exchange information with each other and with the road infrastructure, take corrective action where appropriate and then provide feedback to the drivers to help avoid dangerous situations.
Big Blue says that, if the research is successful, drivers may soon be able to tell the car behind them to stop tailgating or ask the right-lane bandit in front to pull over so they can pass.
Eset tops in virus scanning
Anti-virus software maker Eset has picked up its 44th 100% Award from independent malware testers Virus Bulletin for its NOD32 product. This means that it has not missed a single "in the wild" worm or virus in this testing since May 1998. The closest competitor to Eset is Symantec, which has received 38 100% Awards.
Eset has also been recognised by testing organisation AV-Comparatives. It was the only antivirus software awarded the Advanced+ certification in the May 2007 Anti-Virus Comparative No. 14 test.
Nintendo game outsells Sony
Nintendo's Wii game console outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 by a ratio of more than six to one in June in Japan, solidifying Nintendo's leading position.
Nintendo sold 270,974 units of the Wii in the four weeks ended June 24th, compared with 41,628 units for the PS3 and 17,616 units for Microsoft's Xbox 360, according to data from games magazine publisher Enterbrain. - (Reuters)
